The events outlined above are like furious whipping spume on a cresting ocean wave. Events are covered and interpreted at the time from establishment and alternative perspectives. To grasp the deeper currents propelling that particular set of socio-economic upheavals you need temporal distance. Even then there can be a tendency to the hubris of presentism. I have in mind Michel Foucault’s assertion, writing a decade after the events described, that (The Subject and Power, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1982, pp.777-795) in relation to the “…developing power structures of the state …two complex dichotomies [were] reaching a climax: individualization versus totalization.” What did Foucault mean by those dichotomies and what is the evidence for their climax being reached? To get a handle on these two concepts of his we need to start with his analysis of pastoral power. The term refers to the power the Church (as in a pastor or priest) to blackmail you into thinking you would go to hell unless you conducted your life according to “… a very strong codification of the moral experience.” (Morality and Practice of the Self: Introduction part 3, History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, 1985) He pointed out that the aspects of this kind or power as differentiated from sovereign, juridical or military, were very effective because it relied on individuals believing the ultimate authority of the pastor – God– knows their conscience. The beauty of the product as far as the Church was concerned was that nothing concrete had to be promised for this world– salvation would come after they have toiled, suffered diseases, sinned and died. This unique form of power migrated out of its ecclesiastical boundaries and into the social realm, from about the 18th century. This understanding of the legacy of Christianity is echoed in Michel Onfray’s 2007 book The Atheist Manifesto. For him the prime examples of “Two thousand years of Christian discourse…” (p. 47) can be found in the body and the law. With regard to the former Onfray states that all branches of medicine are “ontologically contaminated” by the Christian idea that the body is weak and sin-prone while the separated mind is the seat of nobility. As for Western law, the assumption of free will underpins Adam’s choice to eat fruit in Genesis so his disobedience must be punished as must all subsequent infractions of ecclesiastical and later, temporal law.
For Foucault the state became the new vector for post pastoral control. He labelled this transition process: increasing ‘governmentality’. Salvation now had more earthly concerns such as health, wealth and security. Then there was no way of hiding from God now there is no way to hide from norms that have been co created by the individual and institutions of education, medicine and, importantly, the marketing arms of business. In fact, in the health industry at least, norms now have a number. The Quantified Self is now a movement dedicated to tracking, recording and sharing daily calorific intake, heart rate, lung capacity, lactic acid build-up, ad infinitum. (To Save Everything Click Here, Evgeny Morozof, 2013) It is this last part of the methodological triad that Foucault would have used as an example of norms being co-created by the participant technophile and app suppliers. My iPhone records, whether I like it or not, the number of steps I make each day. Thus, certain health metrics are aggregated, amplified on social and conventional media which then become accepted as healthy benchmarks to which you have to aspire or be deemed morally slothful. This also exemplifies an aspect of Foucault’s notion of how we are made subjects– as in subject to a powerful norm. The interesting point about this cocreation of powerlessness on the part of the individual is that there is no one entity to ‘blame’ in this acquiescence to, in this case, dietary strictures. To further dissect the power of norms Foucault couples knowledge with desire. In our case the dissemination of the knowledge of biometrics creates the norms of health to which we desire to conform.
Undoubtedly there were many ‘oppositions’ clamouring for attention in the 60s and 70s. According to Foucault oppositions such as power of men over women, parents over children, psychiatry over the mentally ill, medicine over population and administration over the way we live are not just anti-authoritarian but question the status of the individual. Here he means to be, on the one hand respected as an individual, but at the same time not to be isolated and divided from the community. As well as being subject to the State’s powers of control the individual is also subject to their own identity by conscience and self-knowledge. To complicate matters, not only are norms co created but so is power. As Donald Palmer explains: (Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners, 1997) “Now power must be understood in a context of background institutions, practices and discourses which both create power and are created by power. As power mutates in [different systems of thought which become socially controlling] it generates new kinds of desires and new kinds of subjects.” The chief criticism of his approach is that Foucault does not offer any way out of these new forms of subjectivity except to urge people to refuse “…this new kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.” As contemporary Professor of Journalism (Adjunct) at Monash, Chris Nash said that while Foucault offered illuminating “…observations of the changing way the body was viewed from an object of punishment to medicalization and self-discipline his theories were [ultimately] a static descriptor.” What is meant here is that Foucault does not offer a testable framework for thinking about what generates change.
The Scottish venture here alludes to my ‘escaping’ London in 1972 to seek refuge in Scotland.
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